I have not had too many new vehicles and the last brand new car I bough was 12 years ago. I recall in that manual, there were several pages in the maintenance section (like literally there was something you were supposed to do every 1,500 miles) and then an oil change every 3,000. At the start, oil changes were cheap so I let the dealer do that and their multi-point inspection or whatever, but other than that, I just changed the transmission fluid and coolant at the suggest mileages along with oil changes every 3,000 miles or so myself.
Looking at the Ram maintenance chart in the manual, it looks pretty simple. It pretty much says to change the oil as indicated by the indicator (I will probably change mine once per year since I will have less than 5,000 miles per year on it), along with a lot of items to "inspect" at those intervals: battery, CV joints, brakes, hoses, exhaust, etc. The only "replace" items are air filters every 30k miles or 3 years, spark plugs every 10 years or 100k miles, transfer case fluid at 12 years or 120k miles, and coolant at 10 years or 150 k miles. This is all simple stuff I would normally do myself anyways, and I won't have to deal with the coolant or transfer case fluids for 10 years. As far as warranty purposes (including a Mopar extended warranty), is it fine to just do this stuff myself as long as I keep receipts? I mean, even if I get the 8 year warranty, the only things I would really need to do in that time would be to change the oil and the air filter a couple of times. Is it enough to just have receipts for those two things in that period of time in case I ever need warranty work? On one hand, I like the idea of bringing it in for an oil change just so they can check out the other stuff and mark it down, but on the other hand, I don't really like the idea of people messing with it, spilling oil, putting the plug in crooked, etc. What do you guys think? For something that is going to have little use and come to the time intervals before the mileage intervals like my case, am I better off just changing the oil myself for the first 10 years until finally bringing it in for coolant and transfer fluid change and spark plugs? And what about the transmission fluid? I didn't see anything about that in the manual as far as changing it. I am referring to the Hemi in my case.
Looking at the Ram maintenance chart in the manual, it looks pretty simple. It pretty much says to change the oil as indicated by the indicator (I will probably change mine once per year since I will have less than 5,000 miles per year on it), along with a lot of items to "inspect" at those intervals: battery, CV joints, brakes, hoses, exhaust, etc. The only "replace" items are air filters every 30k miles or 3 years, spark plugs every 10 years or 100k miles, transfer case fluid at 12 years or 120k miles, and coolant at 10 years or 150 k miles. This is all simple stuff I would normally do myself anyways, and I won't have to deal with the coolant or transfer case fluids for 10 years. As far as warranty purposes (including a Mopar extended warranty), is it fine to just do this stuff myself as long as I keep receipts? I mean, even if I get the 8 year warranty, the only things I would really need to do in that time would be to change the oil and the air filter a couple of times. Is it enough to just have receipts for those two things in that period of time in case I ever need warranty work? On one hand, I like the idea of bringing it in for an oil change just so they can check out the other stuff and mark it down, but on the other hand, I don't really like the idea of people messing with it, spilling oil, putting the plug in crooked, etc. What do you guys think? For something that is going to have little use and come to the time intervals before the mileage intervals like my case, am I better off just changing the oil myself for the first 10 years until finally bringing it in for coolant and transfer fluid change and spark plugs? And what about the transmission fluid? I didn't see anything about that in the manual as far as changing it. I am referring to the Hemi in my case.
